Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Beer Song


Here's the lyrics of Kimya Dawson's beer song. She sang this one Sunday. She wrote this about her years in substance abuse. She was living in a self-imposed hell. Yet, a generation is walking away from the Church because we've failed to communicate.

The beer I had for breakfast was a bottle of Mad Dog
and my 20/20 vision was fifty percent off.
He said "Punch-buggy red" and punched me right in my left eye.
I said "Don't you mean pediddle?" and I lit his house on fire.
He came home on acid, I was holding his shotgun,
I was dressed like Tina Turner in Beyond Thunder Dome.
He said "Don't shoot", I said "I won't, I love you, you're my friend."
I handed him my wig and shot myself in the head.
Then I stuffed a box of tissues in the hole in my skull,
I got in my Mazda and I drove to the mall.
I bought a big johnson shirt and some silicone tits.
When I pulled out the tissues they were covered with shit.

And the beer I had for breakfast was a box of cheap white wine,
and the boom box on my shoulder was a box of clementines.
I ate every single one without noticing the mold.
You said "You're gross my darling," I said "No I'm rock and roll."

Even though I'd never ever been in a band
I got "cool as black ice" tattooed on my hand
and the Christians gave me comic books as if I would be scared
of burning in Hell, well I was already there.

And the beer I had for breakfast, silver bullet in the brain,
and the beer I had for lunch was a bottle of night train,
and the beer I had for dinner was my crazy neighbor's pills.
We had to sit down on skateboards just to make it down the hill.
Then I peed my pants and you stole the groom's cigar,
and some old man made me watch him masturbate locked in his car.
When I got back to the apartment you were face down on the floor,
you said "Don't go to bed yet, let's go get a 64."

And the beer I had for breakfast was a pint of Jim Beam,
and a fifth of peach schnapps and some warm Sunny D.
And you said "Bottoms up" just as I bottomed out.
I tried to scream "Fuck you" but blood was pouring out my mouth.

And Evan Dando never planned on telling you the truth,
and your Leonardo I.D. card is your fountain of youth.
You can be a teenager for your whole fucking life,
just find some pretty sucker and make that bitch your wife.
I guess by now you all know my friend Danny broke his neck;
he was driving home from Sirens when he got into a wreck.
First I cried for him, and then I cried for me,
haunted by the ghost of the girl I used to be.
But the rocks with holes are warm in my hands,
and I buried my toes in the hot, hot sand,
and the silver pink pony kisses me and says
"You've come a long, long way and you deserve to be really happy."


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some surreal imagery there. A "Descent into Hell" decline narrative, and the only part Christians played in it were apparently to hit up the protag with Jack Chick Tracts.

Scratching my head over the resolution at the end; the "silver pink pony" reference makes me think of either My Little Pony or the Invisible Pink Unicorn. (My writing partner does MLP fanfics to unwind, and you know about me and Unicorns.) Whichever, looks like the pony was the only one there to catch the protag hitting bottom.

Hard to tell the genre from the lyrics alone, but from the subject matter I'd guess some sort of punk or metal.

HUG

MJ said...

As soon as I heard "comic book" I thought of Chick.

I ponder what do we do for this generation? I think that we are at a point in history, due to our own mistakes, that we need a new mantra. "Jesus is the Answer" doesn't work any long. The reason is, the answer that we've been giving people is a tub of Bondo and we tell people to smear it all over their life, sand it down until it shines like the top of the Chrysler Building.

The young people today aren't dumb. They've been used by mommy and daddy, used by friends, used by teachers, used by bosses, used by boyfriends and girlfriends, used by pimps and dealers . . . and now comes along the Christians who want to used them too. We've always wanted to use them for our own penitence, to win brownie points with God and our Christian peers. We see them as the enemy, we see them as the target of our "ministry" projects.

Maybe, if there is any hope, that we stop using them too. That we have unconditional love. That means that we will love them as they are. Feel compassion for the hell that they live in, even if it is self imposed and that we never plan on inviting them to church or evangelizing them . . . just loving them.

Anonymous said...

Mike-

I love your posts and the way that you think. I'm pretty much agnostic today and so much or what you write about, discuss or delve into hits home. In many cases they helped me reach a tipping point in how I lost my faith.

I agree so much about what you said about bondo. That is how God is sold, believe in Christ and you'll have no more troubles or God will get you through. I learned the hard way that is not always the case. For me it felt like it was all too often about manipulation..where you have to fit this mold, and think, believe, and look at things in this very subjective way where the Bible is skewed.

Unconditional love and learning to disagree are what is needed most but I don't know if that will happen. Too many church leaders here in the US are the neo-reformed and they feel threatened; and as a result the siege mentality only deepens. It's a problem makes me wonder what many evangelicals would have done in Rome when they would have been a minority..could they act the same way and use the gospel to manipulate and control people? Probably not...bondo would not have worked.

Eagle

MJ said...

I'm glad you come here Eagle. If you use the term "Agnostic" by its true definition (which I think you are) it is not a bad place to be. Meaning of course without certainty. I know many people use the term to mean that they are absolutely certain that there no possible answers. So, Christianity and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive.

I know that I've lost a lot of my certainty. As an evangelical I was taught that you had to have certainty in every possible question of life. Now, I'm quite confident that God is there and the basics of Christianity are true and I can live like that, but I can also be honest about my doubts that are real.